


a dish best served... with pumpkin spice

by sebviathan



Category: Psych
Genre: Autumn, Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, M/M, Psychtober
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-03
Updated: 2017-10-03
Packaged: 2019-01-08 15:37:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12257232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sebviathan/pseuds/sebviathan
Summary: Halloween starts early in the Lassiter household now that Shawn is living in it.Terriblyearly.





	a dish best served... with pumpkin spice

Carlton has had enough.

It's only a week into October and he has already dealt with  _too much_  Halloween. From pumpkin guts clogging up his sink drain on the very first day of the month, to what looks like Party City barfed in their living room, to giant foam spiders that look extremely real in dim lighting and  _especially_  when you're not expecting to see them after a long day of work... Shawn is driving him a little nuts.

Okay—he gets it. He's knows that Shawn never got much of a chance to be a child on Halloween with Henry Spencer as a father. Ruining all the movies, scaring him to death with stories about  _real_ monsters, only letting him dress up as a police officer while trick-or-treating...

So sure, it makes sense that he's going to make the most of it now that he's the boss of himself. Carlton personally has nothing  _against_  it, either. He likes autumn! He does! He likes the weather changes and the color schemes and the very particular way coffee tastes when it starts to get cold in Santa Barbara.

He's grown out of all the mythical aspects to it, but he still very much enjoys the classic Halloween movies on ABC Family and has had fun handing out candy with Victoria. And then, in the past few years, with Shawn.

This is his first October  _living_  with Shawn, though. He could only have vaguely predicted how much more intense it would all get.

You'd think the pranks would have stopped once they started dating in the first place, but no. If anything, they've just become more juvenile. And Carlton has accepted that! It's one of those things Shawn does to show that he really likes you, and that he isn't going anywhere.

Sometimes, honestly, Carlton can really appreciate finding all the magnets on the fridge turned upside-down, or his gun-handle mug replaced with some gimmicky one that Shawn found at a thrift store, or his phone background changed to a stupid meme. Even if they might be genuinely inconveniencing, at times.

What he is finding it increasingly more difficult to appreciate, however, are the scare-pranks.

Fake rat in the cupboard. Fake  _squirrel_  in the cupboard. Monster masks set behind the bathroom mirror. Zombie hand poking through the curtain while he's in the shower (followed by Shawn in a zombie mask and  _only_  a zombie mask). His ringtone being set to a stock horror scream (and startling  _everyone_  in Vick's office while they're getting briefed). Fake pile of bugs in the bed where Shawn should be when he wakes up, giving Carlton a very real moment of fear that his boyfriend has been Kafka'd.

That one, somehow, is what crosses the line for him.

"You need to stop doing this, Spencer," he grumbles once he wakes up properly, throwing off the covers and stomping his way to the bathroom.

Shawn follows, chuckling. "I'm back to 'Spencer'? Is that the price I must pay for innocent holiday spirit?"

"You know it isn't even  _close_  to Halloween yet."

"It's Halloween in my  _heart_ , Lassie. Once the clock strikes October I simply cannot waste a single second, you know this! And since you're not gonna get spooky at all until the day of,  _I_  have to pull both our weights around here."

Carlton frowns and continues to the toilet, which is covered in glued-on plastic spiders that he'll probably have to scrape off at some point, and then doesn't respond for the next minute. Comfortable as they've become, he is  _not_  going to talk to him while pissing.

When he turns back, Shawn is leaning against the sink.

"You can't actually be that mad."

"I'm not saying I'm mad. I'm saying that one of these mornings, Shawn, I'm going to instinctively draw my gun on you or whatever you've set to fly out at me, and it will not be my fault."

"Oh, come on, your trigger finger isn't nearly as bad as you like to say it is... If it was, the entire squirrel population of Santa Barbara would be extinct—"

Just then, Carlton reaches into the cabinet and pulls out a tube of toothpaste that he did not buy—which reads  _pumpkin spice_  on the label. He stares at it, stone-faced.

"You can't be serious."

"...I  _was_ ," Shawn says, clearly holding back laughter, "but then I tried it and it's... sadly disgusting. The Crest is still in there, don't worry."

He then takes the regular toothpaste out of the cabinet himself, and switches it with the tube in Carlton's hand. Carlton himself decides not to say much as he brushes his teeth, while Shawn continues,

"If you think about it, Lassie, I'm doing you a favor! As each day passes, you'll become more and more desensitized, and soon it'll be  _impossible_  to startle you. You just spend all your embarrassment points on  _me_ , your loving and understanding boyfriend, and after Halloween passes? You're indestructible. Nothing fazes you. You could stare right in the devil's face without flinching. Spiders could come out of the showerhead and you'd just brush it off—"

"I swear to god," he says quickly, spitting his toothpaste out, "if you put anything even  _resembling_  spiders in the shower—"

"I promise I won't, but imagine!"

"I don't want to imagine. Nor do I need to, because I'm a  _detective_ , and—"

"Oh—you just got toothpaste in my eye..."

"Sorry." He washes his mouth out and wipes his face with a towel. "But I'm a detective, and all I need to fight off are criminals. Not spiders or rats or, or  _the devil_  or what have you... And maybe you didn't know this, but the ability to be startled is actually pretty crucial to the job."

"Ha, ha."

Carlton smirks and promptly walks right past him, back out of the bathroom to get dressed.

Shawn, who has no obligation to be anywhere today because Gus will be at his dumb job, remains in his pajamas as he scoops up all the plastic bugs from the bed and dumps them into a bucket—"for future use," he says. He then gets comfortable back under the blankets until it's time for Carlton to leave, at which he jumps up to give him a goodbye kiss.

He  _is_  about to accept it, but then pulls back at the last second.

"Actually—no kisses for you this morning, Spencer."

"Aw, what? Does my breath still smell like rotting pumpkin?" He starts to blow air into his own hand to smell, but then—"Wait, how is  _that_  a problem for you when you can kiss me right after my tongue has been in your—"

"Because not only does your breath smell like some horrific amalgamation of pumpkins and fluoride, but due to how I woke up, I can only imagine I'm about to kiss a giant cockroach."

"...A giant  _sexy_  cockroach?"

"Absolutely not." Shawn then pouts very sincerely, which Carlton has to tear his eyes from if he's going to retain his dignity. "You made your bed, Shawn. A bed full of bugs, right next to your boyfriend."

After he closes the front door behind him, he figures he ought to make sure Shawn knows he isn't entirely serious. So he pulls out his phone.

 

_Don't worry, I'll kiss you again when you metamorphosize back._

 

He sends, slides his phone back in his pocket, and takes only two steps forward before hastily pulling it back out for one more message.

 

_< 3_

 

*

 

Carlton's general rule is that he neither forgives  _nor_  forgets. Shawn, somehow, has managed to be an exception to that rule for a very long time. Long before they were dating, even. Though back then it did bother him that he was becoming softer, that it was becoming harder to view the world in a black-and-white sense of  _people who've wronged me_  and  _people who haven't_.

Now, he doesn't mind so much that his earlier annoyance has faded. He doesn't even get hung up on any pride-related bullshit as he decides to drive home for his lunch break.

As he starts onto his street and spots what seems to be Shawn raking the leaves out front, however... he gets an idea.

Before he can get close enough that Shawn would recognize the car, Carlton makes an abrupt three-point turn and drives back the way he came. Then, like he  _never_  does for fear of what may happen to his car if it isn't in clear sight, he takes the alleyway and parks out back.

He's sure it'll be fine for the few minutes it takes to do this.  _Pretty_  sure.

Quietly as he can—in retrospect, probably  _way_  overestimating how well Shawn can hear, he sneaks through the median of grass between his and his neighbor's houses like he's tailing a suspect. A quick peek past the corner tells him that Shawn's back is turned, and that he's  _very_  focused on piling up those leaves.

Carlton isn't the type to pull pranks and never has been. He'll readily admit, in fact, to being the one kid who always sold out whomever put the tack on the teacher's chair, or who shot a spitball across the room.  _He_  was the kid assigned to take down names of students who misbehaved when there was a substitute. Even in high school.

It's just... never felt like a worthwhile use of his time. Why go so far out of his way for something so petty, especially when it could just as easily harm him in the process? If someone truly deserves retribution, he's always had better ways of giving it to them.

So aside from the occasional prank call, or putting someone's hand in water while they're sleeping in order to fit in at sleepovers, this is about the first one he's done. He feels pretty good about it.

After one more peek to make sure Shawn won't immediately see him coming, Carlton takes a deep breath and takes a running start at him.

It occurs to him very suddenly that he's going to dirty himself up, doing this, but it's too late now. The autumn wind is in his hair and his lungs, and the sort of confidence that Shawn probably feels every day is coursing through him, and Shawn himself is straightening up, turning around—

"Lass—?— _mmph_ —"

Before he can even finish his name, Carlton is tackling Shawn directly into the pile of leaves.

He has, of course, jumped into piles of leaves before (he didn't  _entirely_  lack a childhood), but it's never been so... exhilarating. Nevermind all the dirt and bits of leaf falling inside his shirt, he hits the ground with a grin that's splitting his face open, and with a genuine, hearty laugh.

"Oh my  _god_ , Lassie," Shawn says with a cough a moment later, the wind effectively knocked out of him. "You actually just— _body-slammed_  me..."

"That's what you get!" Carlton nearly shouts, quite proud of himself. Though he does quickly move off of him so as to let him breathe.

"And it was fucking  _awesome_ —why don't you do that more often?"

"Oh— _don't_  you try to pretend this wasn't solid revenge on my part... I  _got_  you! I, Carlton Lassiter, pranked  _you_."

"Which is exactly what you should be doing more often, Lassie!" he beams, looking deeply proud.

Carlton frowns. Not because he necessarily wanted Shawn to be  _upset_ , but...

"...You're not annoyed? At all?"

"Well, a little bit, yeah," Shawn shrugs, as much as he can while halfway inside a pile of leaves. "I was raking all these fuckin' leaves to make up for the bugs-in-the-bed thing in the first place and I _guess_  I probably deserve to have to rake them back up again, but—"

Partially to compromise the sudden rush of emotion in his chest and partially to shut him up, Carlton grabs Shawn by both cheeks and kisses him.

"Mm—" Shawn pulls away after just a moment, and mumbles against him, "So this makes us even, right?"

He answers that by kissing him again—longer, this time, and tighter, and deeper. Admittedly he gets a bit carried away, but the leftover adrenaline from tackling Shawn and just the pure  _emotion_  as he breathes him in properly for the first time today, and the smell of crushed autumn leaves and fresh autumn air and the earth beneath him and of  _Shawn_... would be enough to overwhelm anyone, he's sure.

What does get him to jerk away is a car zooming down the road and honking right as it passes their house, reminding him that they're currently  _outside_  and, probably, making fools of themselves to the whole neighborhood.

But more importantly—so much so that it barely occurs to him to be angry about that person driving so fast in a residential neighborhood—it reminds him of something he needs to take care of, now that his prank is done with.

"Oh shit, my  _car_."

**Author's Note:**

> A companion piece to [this art](http://bassdraws.tumblr.com/post/152130615166/psychtober-day-21-in-which-the-autumn-domesticity) that I drew for last year's Psychtober.
> 
> I don't know whether I made it obvious enough, but the title of the fic refers to revenge, a dish _usually_ best served cold.
> 
> Also, I hadn't thought about it at all before writing this, but The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka is conceptually _terrifying_ to me and I inadverdently convinced myself that it is to Lassiter, too. 
> 
> Recommended listening:
> 
> ~ [psych halloween mix](https://8tracks.com/captainlucifer/a-very-psych-halloween) ~ / ~ [autumn shassie mix](https://8tracks.com/captainlucifer/autumn-in-santa-barbara) ~


End file.
